


something greater than once they were

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Series: The Queer Rogue One AU [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Bisexual Female Character, Break Up, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/F, Getting Back Together, Idiots in Love, Lesbian Character, Marriage Proposal, Nonlinear Narrative, Power of Words, Queer Families, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 12:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14769272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: After five years of ups and down through the war, Jyn makes a decision about her future with Cassia.





	something greater than once they were

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mollivanders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/gifts).



“You know,” said Jyn, flopping into the co-pilot’s seat, “we’re probably not going to die.”

Cassia’s attention lifted from a quintuple-check of her flight calculations. She always did that, even though the entire team knew she could make them on the fly, at near-impossible speed. Jyn had seen her do it multiple times over the last five years. As far as they could tell, though, she wasn’t ignoring anyone, just paranoid.

“Probably,” she agreed, with one of the faint, warm smiles she reserved for Jyn. “It’s a simple—”

“I don’t mean this operation,” said Jyn. “I mean at all, until …” She didn’t believe in jinxes, but  _until we’re old_  felt like tempting fate. She settled for, “It could be years. Decades. The odds are for it.”

She was twenty-eight years old. Only now had it struck her that she might see thirty.

* * *

Two years after Jyn kissed Cassia on a shadowed turbolift, they had settled into something. Lovers, she supposed, though it didn’t sound right. Jyn only ever thought of Cassia as “Cassia,” and sometimes “she,” a  _she_  that eclipsed the other ones. Cassia was the senior operative partnered with Jyn; she was Jyn’s closest friend; she was the person who trailed her hands and mouth all over Jyn’s body, painstakingly learning it; and she was the person who cared more about Jyn’s welfare than anyone left breathing.

Jyn didn’t care less than Cassia. She knew that, and flew into quiet fury the few times anyone suggested otherwise.

Cassia wasn’t one of those people, and yet Jyn sometimes thought she believed them. Or believed the same thing. Jyn cared so much that she once fled from it for weeks, choking on the blur of affection and need and snarling protectiveness. Cassia never understood why, even after. Even now, Jyn suspected.

A full year and a half had passed since Jyn stumbled into an incoherent attempt at reconciliation, and Cassia easily accepted it. These things always appeared that bit easier for her; Cassia accepted her own feelings, whether for the Rebellion or Jyn, as compulsory and immutable. In fact, she seemed to care for Jyn in very much the same way that she did the Rebellion—no sudden jabs nor expectation of reward, just a truth that pervaded every cell and breath.

Jyn couldn’t be like that about anything. Moments passed when she didn’t think of Cassia at all, for no other reason than that she was preoccupied with something unrelated. But the smallest things could bring her to mind, at times so intensely that Jyn would have bled to have her near.

For Jyn, caring could never be something all but willing itself into existence, strengthened by respect and liking but independent of them, a star on its own orbit. She couldn’t be Cassia. For her, it was thought and heart and action, felt for reasons and chosen for reasons. She’d chosen  _Cassia_ , for better or worse.

Cassia did seem happy—occasionally lonely, and shyer than expected, but she lit up at just about anything, and lavished a high-strung affection on Jyn when she thought it welcome. In all honesty, it took Jyn a good while to recognize Cassia’s worrying and periodic lectures  _as_  affection, rather than the chiding they would have meant with Saw, or demands from suspect allies, afterwards. Once she did realize, she … well, she didn’t mind it that much, once she knew why Cassia insisted on running through mission objectives so many times, or complained about Jyn’s fringe diminishing her range of vision, or went on about Jyn needing higher caloric intake, as if she had any room to talk.

But Cassia took just as long to distinguish  _unwelcome_  from  _confused_. Beyond that, she could seem almost droid-like at times, recording and categorizing moments for later perusal. It felt a little as if she were hoarding for a long winter, unlike Jyn, who returned to her because she decided that she’d rather live in what moments she had than bleakly survive.

Jyn didn’t say  _love_ , or often think it. That wasn’t her; she never could reduce her feelings to words. But when she did think it, the awareness seemed to blast through her entire body,  _Cassia_  and  _I love you_  filling her mouth like electricity. At those times, neither common nor rare, she felt Cassia’s happiness and pain as much as her own.

The worst, the absolute worst, was early on—when Jyn turned away and Cassia promptly withdrew from everyone. She didn’t do it the way that Jyn had withdrawn from her, but an awful Cassia way where she turned as uniformly pleasant as she was undercover, and you didn’t realize for awhile that you, and everyone, had been re-categorized as a threat. Cassia even smiled politely at Han Solo when she delivered a message from the princess (to whom he wasn’t speaking at the time).

“I’ll be damned if she orders me around,” he grumbled afterwards.

“She’s a commander,” said Jyn. “It’s in the job description.”

He blinked at her. “She’s a general, but that doesn’t mean—”

“No, she isn’t. She’s a commander.”

They stared blankly at each for a moment. Then Solo’s disgruntled face cracked into a smile—not smarmy the way he could sometimes be, just amused.

“I was talking about the princess,” he said. His voice lightened further. “Is Andor sick or something?”

Jyn’s opinion of him jolted upwards. Apart from Baze and Chirrut, hardly anybody else seemed to notice the oddity in Cassia’s behaviour at all, except as a sudden good mood. All the while, her own dismay escalated, the flat misery of  _I loved you, I miss you_  climbing to  _no, I love you, I didn’t want this, I was afraid but it’s not what you think, I love you._

It was a rough nine weeks.

In fairness, it would have been five weeks if not for Cassia running away. Technically, she accepted a brief solo operation from Draven—otherwise known as running away. And then ‘complications arose,’ whatever that meant (classified), and something that should have lasted nine days took four and half weeks, while Jyn tried to ignore Baze’s sullen fretting and believe Chirrut’s assurances that Cassia was alive and healthy.

She’d wondered, back then, if Cassia even knew she had people worrying about her.

Sometimes she wondered if Cassia knew it now. She certainly looked surprised every time Baze or Jyn implied she’d be around in the future, if they all lived. She always had seemed surprised at that, even before the hellish separation. But then, Jyn couldn’t have said she didn’t feel the same.

Oh, Jyn rarely dwelt on the idea of losing Cassia, hardly allowed for the possibility. It  _was_  a possibility, of course. Cassia might abandon her, as so many others had done—but Jyn feared that less than she would have expected. Before they so much as kissed, Cassia had proven herself beyond anything Jyn could have imagined, or wanted. The weight of Cassia’s half-broken body, the scent and sight of her blood, still wafted into Jyn’s memory and dreams. More probable than another betrayal, much more probable, was—

She steadied a ragged breath.

Cassia didn’t lack self-preservation, as such. As long as her every breath served the Rebellion, or Jyn, she would fight for them. Not for herself, though she didn’t want to die—nothing for herself, frustratingly. It didn’t seem calculated risk so much as some fundamental quality of her being. If her death meant the Rebellion’s survival, so be it; if her death meant Jyn’s survival, so be that.

It was hard to believe that she would survive the war.

Jyn’s odds probably weren’t good, either, but it seemed different to her. She was reckless and determined, not sacrificial. Without difficulty, she could admit to herself that she wanted this or that. Only with Saw had she thought _I want_  and not reached for it, and then only because she wanted his approval more. She might have dedicated her life to the cause, but it mattered beyond that, mattered because it was hers and she wanted to live.

She probably wouldn’t. Probably, they would die together, and Jyn felt a certain consolation in that. And if she did live—she’d tried not to think of it, hadn’t ever followed this track so far—if she did survive, she might well survive Cassia. Very likely survive Cassia.

The realization came as a hot jolt in her chest that crackled into her throat and gut. But her cheeks and hands chilled, despite the heavy evening air, as if the flash of panic had drawn its warmth from her skin. More bizarrely still, she was neither alone with her thoughts nor in any particular danger, just eating dinner in the mess hall.

Her food abruptly passed from unappetizing to nauseating. No, Jyn decided. No need to look for trouble when they already had so much of it. If that day came, she’d face it then. If it didn’t, she’d … not face it, she supposed. It was hard to imagine surviving.

But if they did, maybe they’d find their way, eventually.

* * *

The day that Cassia turned thirty, Rogue One celebrated.

It wasn’t a birthday celebration, really. Cassia’s official date of birth came from the combination of a) her stated age and month of birth upon entering the Rebellion, b) conversions of Fieste’s calendars to Standard, and c) a randomly selected number. She hadn’t known the exact day at six, so she didn’t know it now, and the droid-generated birthday held little meaning for any of them.

Still, the recognition did mean something, their ranking leader’s record switching from  _Age: 29_  to  _Age: 30_. It meant more with the unspoken—unspeakable—knowledge that they might well see her, and all of them, live much longer than that. They might live.

“To living!” Bodhi cried, lifting his bottle of Corellian ale. He’d acquired good quality alcohol through what he termed  _my contacts_ , which Jyn was pretty sure meant  _I asked Luke_   _and he asked Solo_. But it was just them, tonight.

The rest of the team raised their own bottles.

“To living,” they repeated, and with satisfying clinks, gulped down their first mouthfuls.

They’d made it about all of them, thought of it as about all of them, but Cassia looked flushed anyway. Maybe the ale. Maybe the changes in the light. Maybe the long gaze she and Jyn exchanged as everyone laughed at something Chirrut said, or Jyn’s eyes lingering on her afterwards.

It wasn’t her fault. Cassia almost never smiled fully unless Jyn did it first, or kissed her, but then she’d dip her head with a sudden press of dimples, and glance through her eyelashes in a way that Jyn considered a personal affront. It was ameliorated only by the colour creeping Cassia’s skin while she pretended not to notice.

They all allowed themselves the time to celebrate into early the next morning, gossiping about various Alliance spats, toasting variations on  _the Empire’s dying and we’re alive, ha_ , and speculating about everything from which planets would join them next to Chirrut’s amorphous concerns about Princess Leia’s pregnancy. Among themselves, Jyn and Cassia considered it careless and surprisingly irresponsible, but tonight, they didn’t care.

Even after this many years, Jyn could hardly believe herself, contentedly drinking in public, pressed up against the arm of a person she’d shared a bed with for five years, eager to hear four friends talking about nothing of significance.

For herself, she couldn’t remember any urge towards speech in her life, or at least her life from the moment that she huddled silently in her parents’ hideout. But she liked to listen to the others’ conversations.

All of them, really. Chirrut with his mantras, Baze with his grumbles. Bodhi mumbling nervously or irritably or, more often these days, amiably. Cassia’s low replies to this or that, or Cassia charming their way out of trouble, or—she tried not to think of it, but  _Jyn, Jyn, please, Jyn_  echoed through her mind, and so did the memories of lying in a haze afterwards, listening to soft, murmured words she couldn’t understand.

Cassia would whisper in Alderaanian, too, when she woke Jyn out of nightmares and tried to help her wind down. It helped, hearing Cassia’s voice without any need or possibility of comprehension. And Cassia used it during her own … thing. She got lost, sometimes, in her head. Not often, and never anywhere but alone with Jyn in hyperspace, the only time she felt truly safe.

She’d said that much to Jyn, and Jyn silently, expressionlessly basked in it. And she also liked listening to her when—

Well. A lot.

When they finally retired to their quarters, Jyn waited for Cassia to switch on the lights and silently evaluated how tired she was. A little, not too much.

Without warning, she tackled her and pinned her to the wall.

Cassia laughed. “Jyn, what the—”

Although Jyn didn’t much trust herself with words, they did serve their basic function of saying more than her face could.

“We’re alive,” she whispered, and leaned up, releasing Cassia’s left wrist long enough to slip a hand into her hair. Then she trailed her fingertips down Cassia’s cheek to her throat, lightly resting a thumb over her pulse.

Actions said more.

Cassia’s lips parted, tongue darting out to wet the lower lip, her eyes very dark as bewilderment flashed to understanding. Jyn always liked that moment—maybe not best, but near to it. With a familiar clench in her stomach, she pressed closer, sliding her hand back into Cassia’s hair and kissing her throat. Jyn could feel Cassia’s pulse rushing under her mouth, breath quickening against Jyn’s hair.

When Jyn scraped her teeth against her throat, Cassia drew a rough breath and tilted her head back. She couldn’t really be more obvious, but as always, Jyn took care to ask,

“Are we good?”

“Yes,” murmured Cassia, with a soft smile. “We’re good.”

* * *

The battle below Endor, fought far away from their then-current mission, did not end the war. It would have done far less than that, if not for the Emperor’s death at the Skywalkers’ hands. As it was, the Rebellion threw the higher ranks of Imperial government into divided, scattered chaos at one stroke. The Empire surely would be overthrown; within a few months, they knew it was only a matter of time.

The certainty did little for Jyn and Cassia. They thought of themselves as members of the Rebellion more than the Alliance, driven on by conviction in the cause rather than its organization or most people in it. In the months after Endor, though, their work for the Rebellion became—different. Still useful, still needed, but less urgent, less military.

“Slimier,” said Baze.

Jyn and Cassia couldn’t disagree.

Intelligence operatives would always be necessary, of course, in peace or war. Cassia poked around enough to suspect that the higher-ups planned to transition the more successful operatives to government work as the Republic formed, or to use them as groundwork for a New Republic organization of some kind. Jyn and Cassia regarded the idea with professional disinterest and personal repugnance.

“We’re doing this to free the galaxy,” Cassia snapped. “Not to sneak around for bureaucrats.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” said Jyn.

They confined their discussions of it to the ship, where they now confined virtually any discussion of importance, and which they regularly swept for surveillance. Cassia and Jyn trusted their leaders’ ideals but not their methods, and held their privacy as sacrosanct. They had precious little of it, except sometimes on leave.

They’d rarely claimed their leave over the last five years, when it was available at all. Now they requested it as often as possible, especially after their more trifling assignments. As those took up greater and greater shares of their work, and recruits flooded the Rebellion, Jyn couldn’t help thinking of the future. Would there even be a point when the Alliance declared an end to this, or would it just transmute into a new version of the Republic, piece by piece and planet by planet? The way the Old Republic had become the Empire? Her father’s research took shape as the Death Star well before Palpatine declared himself emperor.

The dream of running away, banished for so long, crept back. If they could see no end, could expect no end, then wouldn’t they have to create it for themselves?

If it were Jyn alone, she’d already be gone. But she had her friends to think about, and Cassia, her—

Five years, and she still couldn’t think of a word.

“Girlfriend?” Bodhi suggested, then wrinkled his nose. “No. That’s not Cassia.”

“Right,” said Jyn, flipping through files on her datapad.

“Lover?” he said, and they both cringed. “Okay, I see what you mean.”

Jyn gave this a nod of acknowledgment, not all that interested, but never willing to shrug off Bodhi. As she saw Baze and Chirrut making their way towards the table, she said,

“She’s Cassia. That’s all.”

“There’s got to be a word,” insisted Bodhi. When Chirrut reached them, tapping his way just ahead of Baze, Bodhi turned to him. “What is it called when people spend most of their time together and live together? Indefinitely?”

Baze thumped down into the seat beside him.

“Marriage,” he said dourly.

Jyn’s eyes widened, her thoughts freezing or burning into chaos. She couldn’t tell. When Bodhi and Chirrut laughed, she forced herself to a slight smile, and heard nothing of what they said.

_Marriage._  She’d never thought of it. Not once. They lived day by day and month by month, particularly in those first couple of years. Jyn had allowed herself  _this is good, here and now_ , only later drifting so far as  _what if—?_  But it was a  _what if_  of victory, of companionship, of something other than war, not marriage. Marriage made demands. Demands of the law, the Force, the future—a future she hadn’t dared contemplate until recently. But marriage assumed one, turned  _indefinitely_  to  _forever_ as far as the galaxy was concerned.

She didn’t care about anyone’s opinion, but she did care about the … shape of things, the boundaries and foundations she could depend upon in every corner. For one hazy moment, Jyn imagined  _my, er, friend_  transformed into  _my wife_ , across the stars.

Everyone would know.

Now, silently perched on the co-pilot’s seat, Jyn studied her datapad. Cassia lingered in the edges of her vision, a narrow blur of dark and light.

“We might live,” she said, almost wonderingly, and tilted in Jyn’s direction. “I suppose so. I hadn’t thought of it.”

Jyn felt not the slightest sliver of surprise.

“What would we even do?” Cassia asked.

As far as Jyn could recall, this was the first time that Cassia had spoken of the future as a matter of  _we_  and not  _you_. That grounded her, along with the clear gleam filling the viewport and scattering a residual glow through the cockpit. She’d always liked hyperspace.

“Oh,” Jyn said lightly, “get married and settle in a house on Naboo and grow kutabas.”

Cassia snorted. After a few seconds, Jyn bullied herself into looking over at her. The light obscured her, in an odd way—blotted out the shifts in colour and expression that Jyn usually relied upon. She just looked amused and pretty.

“Our pay couldn’t rent a hovel on Naboo,” she said.

They got paid these days.

“True. And I’ve never grown anything in my life,” Jyn admitted. “I think I have a grey thumb. My mother used to hide plants from me.”

Cassia laughed outright.

As a companionable minute passed, Jyn returned attention to her datapad, berating herself all the while. She didn’t even register the background information that rolled down the screen, just forced herself to blink at regular intervals. At last, though, she inhaled a few deep, regular breaths, then turned to Cassia.

Casually, she said, “We could get married, though.”

All possibility of passing it off as a joke died within a few instants. Cassia stared at her, dark eyes wide and disbelieving. Maybe disbelieving? Damn the light; she hated hyperspace.

“We—” Cassia’s voice broke off, her lips still parted. She gazed at Jyn for another horrible stretch of time. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but who cared? Jyn strained for something to say, but words came poorly at the best of times. “You actually mean—”

“Do I usually say things I don’t mean?” snapped Jyn.

Cassia didn’t respond to the tone, but she rarely did. “You’re asking me to marry you.”

“No,” said Jyn, and took some comfort in the tightening of Cassia’s face. She could at least make out that much. “It was a suggestion.”

Cassia looked down, and then slightly up again, teeth pressing into her bottom lip. In that instant, Jyn did recognize the expression: the same one she wore when Jyn smiled at her or kissed her, but far more uncertain.

“You’re suggesting marriage,” Cassia amended. “Between us.” She glanced around, only then seeming to note their surroundings. “In hyperspace.”

“It’s as good a place as any,” said Jyn.

_“With your feet on my control panel.”_

Jyn shrugged.

Two, three, four more seconds passed—easier seconds, for Jyn. She slouched comfortably in her chair, assured in her conviction that Cassia wouldn’t pass through minor irritations on her way to refusal.

With as little warning as ever, Cassia sprang out of the captain’s seat, stalked over to Jyn, and shoved her feet off the control panel with no ceremony whatsoever. Then she took another step, one that placed her directly in front of Jyn. With her hands held out, she said,

“I don’t want to talk about this from three feet apart.”

Jyn accepted that as reasonable, and let Cassia tug her from slumped to upright, and upright to standing. She didn’t feel the need to release Cassia’s hands afterwards.

For the first time in awhile, it took conscious effort to keep her gaze from drifting to Cassia’s lips. Not for the usual reason, either. A slight curl of her mouth kept disappearing and reappearing as she stared down at Jyn, echoed in the flicker of her lashes: a smile that could not quite believe itself.

Despite Cassia’s  _talk about this_ , she said nothing, gazing at Jyn with wide eyes and cold hands.

“Well?” Jyn demanded.

Cassia wet her lip, which didn’t help. “How long?”

With the ease of similarity—and practice—Jyn filled in what she didn’t say. “Have I considered marriage? About a week.”

“A week,” said Cassia, blankly. “Did something happen?”

For no reason that Jyn could identify, she couldn’t resist her own smile at that, one bright enough for her to feel it in her cheeks and about her eyes.

“Baze said we were practically married already,” she replied, readily enough. “He didn’t know he was saying it, but still. And I thought that—it’d be good to have things clear.”

Cassia looked particularly inscrutable. “To me?”

“To everyone,” said Jyn. “No misunderstandings.”

Again, Cassia’s eyes widened. Her grip loosened, and Jyn had no idea what  _that_  was supposed to mean.

“You want,” Cassia began, then broke off. “You’re proposing that we swear to … to this, to staying forever, because now we’ll probably live long enough for it to matter?”

She could be very concise sometimes, without sacrificing meaning. It was one of Jyn’s favourite things about her.

“Yes,” said Jyn.

“And because you want us sworn before the entire galaxy?” she pressed.

“Yes.”

Cassia released her hands, which for one terrible moment, threw all of Jyn’s conclusions to doubt. Then she stepped even nearer than they already stood, almost as near as they could get, and cupped Jyn’s cheek with one hand, the other dropping to her hip.

“Jyn,” she said helplessly.  _“Jyn.”_

“Is that—”

Cassia pressed her lips to Jyn’s, slanting breathless kisses over every atom of her mouth. Jyn had meant to demand an answer, but even after five years, all thought but  _yes, this, more_  fled. She grasped the back of Cassia’s shoulders, pressed their bodies together, caught up to Cassia’s kisses and deepened them. Heat raced from her spine all the way to her feet and the crown of her head, and she caught Cassia’s lip between her own, lightly biting it.

_Cassia, Cassia._

Jyn settled a hand over Cassia’s throat, stroking down until she could feel Cassia’s life thrumming under her fingers. When they both parted for breath, they still clung to each other.

Cassia’s unsteady smile returned, settling in her mouth and eyes and cheeks. In that moment, it seemed like it might never go away. Between the light of the smile and the light of hyperspace, she looked radiant, something shining and dangerous.

“You think it’s a good idea, then?” said Jyn, feeling more than usually triumphant.

Cassia leaned down again, this time dragging her mouth to Jyn’s ear, her breath as hot and urgent as when she’d talked her out of murder.

“It’s a very good idea,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> I have longer, rambling notes [here](http://anghraine.tumblr.com/post/174305673018/rambling-notes-on-something-greater-than-once-they), but the abbreviated version:
> 
> 1) I always imagined a brief estrangement between Jyn and Cassia spawned by their insecurities at the time, especially Jyn's, but the eventual form it took was definitely inspired by the fics I read in the ... year or so between thinking up the AU and actually writing this. The ones I remember in particular are katsumi's "run to me in the rising dawn" and "a study in communication," and of course incognitajones’s "burned before I’m free."
> 
> 2) Jyn and/or Cassia's perceptions are not necessarily accurate (or not).
> 
> 3) I know the official timeline is different. This AU is my happy place, so I’m sailing even more determinedly than usual in my “movies > scripts > interviews/commentary > anything I find interesting or probable > unreliable Lucasfilm dictates” boat.
> 
> 4) This isn't a Jyn Appreciation Week fic as such, but it's the reason I wanted to post it this week!
> 
> 5) This was fairly difficult to write, especially since I haven't written f/f in this kind of detail before, but I'm also queer myself, but I have very decided opinions on Jyn and Cassian/Cassia. So it was influenced by all those things. In particular, the AU has always been a sort of happy escape from homophobia irl (the entire team is queer! nyah!), so it was complicated, but also really enjoyable (and personally meaningful), to cover the development of a messy but fire-forged queer relationship between two troubled but good people.
> 
> 6) The title doesn't come from a song or canon quote as usual, but because of Emotions, the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges:
> 
>  
> 
> _No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves._


End file.
